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Comment by raldi | Hacker News Reader

I'm surprised more museums don't have modern replicas demonstrating what the ancient artifacts would have looked like when pristine.

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There are stories of when near perfect mirrors entered trade. Some stories are sweet, and others rather macabre:

https://www.japanpowered.com/folklore-and-urban-legends/mirr...

Technology tends to influence cultures in subtle ways few remember a generation later. =3

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Most_Dangerous_Animal_In_T...

Or even polish up the corroded artifacts and mirrors they do have. Why don't they do this?

I think there is a tension between preserving artifacts as-is, vs restoring them.

Restoring them would also cause repeated wear and tear, and potentially erasing clues we haven't recognised as important yet.

Making replicas is more suitable: the public can also touch and use them as well.

Ever seen a polished steel mirror in a gas station bathroom?

British Museum actually does this with their Greek statues - shows how they were painted. The gap between "marble perfection" and "gaudy colors" is wild. Makes you realize how much our idea of classical taste is just patina.

So the sculptors had much better taste than the painters they allowed? Or are the reproductions not faithful?

sounds like partly they didn't have access to great pigments back then

Well, they didn't have pigments that would maintain their color and adhere to a surface for 2000 years.

Do we?

One view is that the western idea of "good taste" was informed by people looking at greek and roman statues and buildings and incorrectly assuming they were always intended to be plain.

Sort of explains a lot doesn’t it

This is why I prefer my rust bucket of a car to something new. In 2,000 years the masses will view it as good taste.

There are frescoes of statues[1] and architecture[2] in Pompeii. Feel free to compare them with the reproductions.

[1] https://www.worldhistory.org/image/2232/fresco-of-a-statue-o...

You forgot link 2

Sorry.

https://www.maxwellanderson.com/pompeian-frescoes-in-the-met...

We don’t know. The painted reconstructions are based on pigments found on the statues, but we dont know exactly how the painting looked.

But the paintings which have been preserved from antiquity are quite beautiful.

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